


Two Faces

by phinnia



Series: Tara Paris Episodes [3]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 15:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16746340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phinnia/pseuds/phinnia
Summary: Faces, from Tara Paris' perspective.





	Two Faces

Tara woke up and looked around.      
  
 _Fuck_.     
  
Vidiians.  
  
Fucking Vidiians.     
  
She was stuck in a cell with Pete Durst and another girl she didn’t know.  
  
“What happened to B’Elanna?”   She looked around.  
  
“I’m right here.”   the girl she didn’t know said.  
  
“You’re not B’Elanna.”   she looks at the girl.   “You don’t look a damn thing like the B’Elanna Torres I know.”  
  
“Well, I _am_.”   The girl looks at her.  
  
“All right, how did we meet, then?”  
  
“In the Maquis.   Chakotay was looking for a pilot.   He dragged you out of some dive in the borderlands and paid your bar bill, and Seska was pissed because you were too expensive and she said you cost too much, but you said you were the best pilot in the quadrant.   I figured that was just the booze talking - and it was real stuff, took two hangover remedies to get you sober enough to fly - but you were as good as you said you were.”   She looks at Tara significantly.   “The next morning I caught you coming out of their bedroom.   We ran into each other in the hall.   You flew us through some awful plasma storm into the Badlands.”  
  
Tara remembers that.  She remembers every minute, and more vividly than she really should, considering the bottle of Glenmoragie she’d been looking through the bottom of.   And Seska was no real prize the next morning.  Talk about _beer goggles_.  Not a bad fuck, but what a _nasty_ temper.   “Right.”    She nods at B’Elanna.   She was obviously the same one.   “So … what happened to the ridges?”    She touches her own forehead.  
  
“I don’t know.”   She says.   “I woke up here after the Vidiians got us.”  
  
A Vidiian - creepy looking things - comes over to the cell and looks them over.  
  
“Take me.”   Tara looks at him defiantly.   “I’m the senior officer, whatever the hell _experiment_ you’re trying to run, take _me_ and run it on _me_.”  
  
Whatever he wants to do, he decides to do it with Durst.    He drags Durst out of the cell at phaser-point.  
  
Tara sighs and slumps back down against the wall.   
  
Then she looks over at B’Elanna.  
  
“Hey.”   She gets on her feet, crouches down.   “Are you okay?”  
  
“No.”  B’Elanna says with a sob in her voice.   “No.   I’m not okay.   I’m scared.   I don’t _get_ scared.”  
  
Tara bites back a retort, and thinks.     Maybe B’Elanna didn’t get scared.   She didn’t know anything about Klingons.     
  
“I always wanted to look like this.”   B’Elanna feels her forehead.    “When I was younger, back on Kessik, I would do almost anything to hide my forehead ridges.  If it means feeling like this, though … oh, I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this.   We barely tolerate each other.”  
  
She does know something about being scared, though.    “Sometimes fear’s good for you.   Keeps you from getting involved in things you aren’t ready for.”  
  
“What the hell would _you_ know about it?”  
  
“You think I don’t get scared?”   Tara’s mouth twitches.   “You sure as _hell_ don’t know how to read people, B’Elanna.   I’m scared now.”  
  
She looks at Tara.   “You don’t _look_ it.”  
  
“I know.   Years of practice.   In front of my father, mostly.  Never show fear in front of Admirals.   They bite.”   Tara smiles bitterly.     
  
“Even if they’re related to you?”  
  
“ _Especially_ if they’re related to you.   They know where all your soft spots are then.”   She remembers an all-admirals dinner party she had to show up at once.   It was truly awful.   So much fucking brass, she could almost choke on it all.   She’d almost tried to picture them all naked, except she wasn’t that much into pain.   Ugh.    Nachayev wasn’t too bad, but the rest of them could go fuck themselves.   Or each other.  
  
“What’s so funny?”     
  
“Just remembering something stupid.”   Tara sighs.    “An all-admirals dinner-party, back when I was in third year.   He trotted me out and pretended he wasn’t ashamed of me for a night.”   
  
“I bet that was terrible.”     
  
“It was.”  
  
“How’d you get through it?”  
  
“Well, I tried picturing them all naked -“  
  
B’Elanna splutters with laughter.     
  
“But I’m not into that much pain.   In retrospect, I’m picturing an enormous all-admirals orgy.”  
  
“Disgusting.”   But she’s trying not to laugh too hard, Tara can tell.     
  
“They’re the only ones who can _tolerate_ each other.”   she grins.  “And their ass-kissing attaches.”  
  
  
She gets knocked out by another fucking Vidiian, but she guesses it’s better than it’s being taken apart for spare organs.   When she wakes up this time, she’s alone in the cell.  
  
Then some other one comes over and starts messing with the cell controls.  
  
“Look.    I don’t know _what_ you did with Durst, but take me instead this time.”   Tara hisses.     
  
“Do you ever stop talking, Paris?”   The Vidiian says in Chakotay’s voice.  
  
She looks at it strangely.   “What the _fuck_?”  
  
“No, if I remember right, I don’t think you do.”   the Vidiian-Chakotay says, and manhandles her out of the cell.   “I don’t know _how_ Ensign Kim puts up with you.”  
  
“Harry _likes_ me.”   she spits.   Some kind of imposter.   They probably know how to do brain transplants.  
  
“Probably knows how to shut you up by now.”   It drags her along behind.   “The only time _I_ could shut you up was when you had a mouthful of my -“  
  
She slaps him hard, and he snickers at her.   “Now she recognizes me.”     
  
“You look better like this.”   Tara says snidely.  
  
“Glad you think so, and you’re welcome.   I should just _leave_ you here, but Harry would complain.”  
  
“How’s _Frisky_?”   Tara asks.   “You miss me yet?”  
  
“No.”     
  
“Well, _good_.”     
  
Then she sees the weirdest thing - Klingon B’Elanna beating the living shit out of a bunch of Vidiians, and Human B’Elanna hacking away at some computer.  
  
And one of the Vidiians has Durst’s face.   It’s staring at the ceiling out of _Durst’s fucking face_.  
  
Tara feels faint and sickened.   Nothing in her whole fucking _life_ could have prepared her for _this_.   She closes her eyes and thinks of Admiral orgies and holy fucking _shit_ , she needs a fucking _drink_.  
  
“Harry, get us out of here.”  Chakotay says.  
  
“Energizing.”   Harry says.  
  
The two B’Elannas go to Sickbay.    Tara just sort of sinks down on the floor.  
  
“Are you all right?”      
  
Wait, is that _sympathy_?   From _Chakotay_?   Heaven fucking _forbid_.  
  
“I don’t think I’m ever going to _not_ see what they did to Durst.”   she says simply, staring down at her boots.  
  
“Yeah.”   He nods.   “That was … that was pretty bad.”  
  
It could have been me, she almost says, but doesn’t.     
  
He goes to Sickbay to get un-VIdiianized.     
  
Harry runs into the room, looks at her for a second, and takes her hand tightly.  
  
“I need a goddamn _drink_.”  she says vehemently, and gets up.  
  
  
She pours herself a whole glass of Glenmoragie and downs half of it in one gulp, trying to forget the VIdiian looking up through Durst’s face.     
  
It doesn’t work, but the burn hurts like hell going down.     
  
Shit.   She should have gotten some kali’fal from that damn Ferengi.   That’s what this night needs.  Real kali’fal.     
  
“Bad down there?”   Harry replicates himself a beer.  
  
“The head Vidiian _stole Durst’s face_ and put it on _himself_.”   Tara says hollowly.  
  
Harry hisses through his teeth.   “Yeah.   Bad.”  
  
“Could have been me.”    she says.   “I told them to take me.”    Then she stalks over to the replicator, because fuck it, and gets it to replicate her a glass of kali’fal, and downs that without tasting it.   It burns even more than the Scotch did.  
  
Harry wraps his arms around her, tight, and doesn’t say anything.   He takes her to bed and buries his face in her hair and still doesn’t say anything.   There’s nothing really to say.  
  
She doesn’t cry.      
  
She never cries.    Crying was worse than being scared.   Her father hated her crying.  
  
But she almost does.   She feels the distant, unfamiliar prickle of tears behind her eyes.  
  
She can’t sleep that night, because every time she closes her eyes, she sees Durst’s face looking up at her.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. :)


End file.
